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The Ancient World Ph. Gignoux and A. Tafazzoli

(ed. and tr.): Anthologie de Zādspram. Édition
critique du texte pehlevi, traduit et commenté.
(Studia Iranica, Cahier 13.) 441 pp. Paris:
Association pour l'Avancement des Études
Iraniennes, 1993. (Peeters, BFr. 2100.)

Shaul Shaked

Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies / Volume 60 / Issue 03 / October 1997,
pp 543 - 543
DOI: 10.1017/S0041977X00032572, Published online: 05 February 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0041977X00032572

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Shaul Shaked (1997). Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 60, pp
543-543 doi:10.1017/S0041977X00032572

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 REVIEWS
related texts affords the possibility of
re-assessing such an approach; much more
work in this area remains to be done.
M. J. GELLER
PH. GIGNOUX and A. TAFAZZOLI (ed.
and tr.): Anthologie de Zddspram.
Edition critique du texte pehlevi, tra-
duit et commente. (Studia Iranica,
Cahier 13.) 441 pp. Paris:
Association pour l'Avancement des
Etudes Iraniennes, 1993. (Peeters,
BFr. 2100.)
This is an edition, with translation and notes,
of an important Pahlavi text, one of the major
books of the ninth century, a high point of
Zoroastrian religious composition. Its publica-
tion fills a lacuna which has been felt to exist
in Middle Persian studies. Apart from the
edition by Behramgore Tehmurasp Anklesaria
(1964), the only other major tool for studying
this text has been a glossary in New Persian by
the late Mehrdad Bahar (1972). The present
edition, with its careful transcription, transla-
tion and commentary can therefore be greeted
as timely and useful.
There are regrettably some significant
Zoroastrian Middle Persian texts that have not
yet been properly edited and translated, among
them the Bundahisn and most of the Denkard.
It is however encouraging that the major texts
gradually find their editors and interpreters.
The collaboration between two noted scholars,
one French and the other Iranian, has in this
case proved particularly beneficial. Professor
Tafazzoli died in Tehran in mysterious circum-
stances shortly after this review was written.
The reviewer wishes to pay tribute to this
fine scholar.
The edition given here was preceded by an
unpublished work done by the late Marijan
Mole, as recorded in the preface. Bringing out
a Nachlass, is notoriously tricky. It is easy to
understand that it proved more practical to
publish the work on the basis of a fresh
reading, and the readers will be grateful for
this decision of the authors.
The importance of The selections of
Zddspram lies in the fact that it encompasses
most of the central themes in late Zoroastrian
theology, ranging as it does from cosmogony
to eschatology, from the life of Zoroaster to
the propagation of the religion, from questions
of doctrine to some questions of ritual and
practice, although it is not particularly inform-
THE NEAR AND MIDDLE EAST
THERESE METZGER: Die Bibel von
Meschullam und Joseph Qalonymos:
Ms. M 1106 der Universitatsbiblio-
thek Breslau (Wroclaw). (Quellen
und Forschungen zur Geschichte
des Bistums und Hochstifts
Wurzburg, Bd. XLII.) 148 pp.
543
ative on the latter topics. Together with the
other Pahlavi books of the period, it represents
a remarkable achievement of codification and
canonization of doctrine and faith in the
Zoroastrian faith. Like all such efforts, what is
included is not necessarily more interesting for
us than what is excluded, although the exclu-
sions are ultimately more difficult to retrieve
for scholars working at a distance of more than
a millennium from the period in question.
Given the wide range of topics, the vocabulary
of the book is particularly rich, and contributes
much to our knowledge of Middle Persian.
The two scholars have done a fine job at
editing and translating this work. All the same,
one could argue about the way a given phrase
or word was understood. A selection of notes
on the text in which certain individual points
will be taken up will be published by me, I
hope, elsewhere. In order not to exceed the
limited scope allotted to a review, the discussion
of these points has been omitted from the
present paper.
Just one or two points on general matters:
in a language like Zoroastrian Middle Persian,
notorious for the great distance that exists in it
between orthography and reading, there seems
to be little point in trying to reflect in
transcription the orthographic variations occur-
ring in the manuscripts. Should one transcribe,
on the basis of manuscript fluctuations, the
same word once pddifrdh (1:16) and another
time pddofrdh (1:17)? Should one depart from
the regular normalized form widard to tran-
scribe widord (e.g. 2:9), because, as the authors
explain (p. 147), the manuscript spells it wtwlt'?
The word for 'star' is sometimes spelled stwl
(e.g. 34:49; 35:43), but not even these authors
have considered it appropriate to transcribe it
otherwise than star. In words transcribed from
Pahlavi one generally aims at presenting a
normalized reading, true as far as possible to
the historical probabilities, taking as guidelines
the evidence of the Manichaean Middle Persian
orthography and of the New Persian pronunci-
ation. The shifty spelling of Pahlavi manuscripts
can at best represent dialect variations of
Middle Persian, at worst the idiosyncratic
pronunciation of a late copyist.
In some cases the transcription seems to
reflect typing or proof-reading errors (e.g. 29:4,
rasened); such cases are by no means numerous
and cannot be claimed to be typical.
It would be churlish to complain that
problems of religious history and those relating
to the themes of the book were not discussed
at greater detail by the authors. One should be
grateful for the work accomplished.
SHAUL SHAKED
Wilrzburg: Kommissionsverlag
Ferdinand Schoningh, 1994.
A quick search through the catalogues of
various Judaica collections reveals that for
every scrap of talmudic manuscript material
one will find an impressive number of Hebrew
Bible codices, often sumptuously decorated and